Growing Awareness

When the Jade Ajani's Pacific Northwest documentary Growing Awareness came out in 2008, the acronym CSA had yet to root itself firmly in the popular vernacular. Now, the community supported agriculture movement has become as much a part of the local foods movement as backyard chicken coops and farmers markets.

Growing Awareness explores the CSA--a set-up in which consumers pay an initial fee directly to farmers and in return receive a weekly basket of fresh produce throughout the growing season--as an alternative to the industrial food system.

On Thursday, Feb. 24, you can watch a screening of Growing Awareness in the cellar of Red Feather Lounge while eating a locally inspired three-course meal. Tickets are $25 a pop and proceeds benefit the local foods movement. This monthly dinner and a movie series is organized by the Treasure Valley Food Coalition, which is in the process of completing a local foods assessment. According to its website, the assessment will "help us make better decisions about what we eat and, in doing so, [help] to chart a more sustainable community and food system for us all."

Next month's dinner and a movie will take place on Thursday, March 31, and feature the film American Dream, which according to the film's press release, "shows how life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness has become work, debt and the pursuit of stuff."